Chapter VIII: Religion & Belief
say by the dark hand of a Daemon Prince. His return has caused much controversy, and it is still a matter of dispute whether he can retake his office as Grand Theogonist, and if that happens, what will happen to Esmer? Another noted Sigmarite is Luthor Huss. He rose from the ranks of the clergy and the common folk call him the Prophet of Sigmar. An orphan raised by the cult and a powerful warrior against the forces of Chaos, Huss was elevated for some time to the rank of Lector. Disgusted by the cult’s powerful leaders, he has since rejected all titles and now wanders the Empire, fighting Chaos and striving to return the cult to its old ways of ascetic virtue and martial might against corruption. Openly preaching against “the voluptuousness of the Arch Lectors” has yet to move the cult against him. Curiously, Grand Theogonist Volkmar remained silent on the matter of Luthor Huss; a silence many understood as agreement. Matters came to a head when Huss discovered a young Reikland blacksmith named Valten, whose courage and prowess convinced Huss that he was nothing less than Sigmar reborn. Grand Theogonist Esmer, long an enemy of Huss, thought this heresy of the highest order, but Huss and Valten appealed directly to the Emperor. Karl Franz was not about to step down and elevate an 18 year-old boy, but he did give Valten the hammer Ghal Maraz to wield in battle against the forces of Archaon. Valten’s later disappearance, perhaps murdered by inhuman hands, has done little to heal the growing schism within the worship of Sigmar and the wider Empire. Holy Days The principal festival of the cult is the first day of summer. This commemorates both the day when Sigmar was crowned Emperor, and the date of his abdication when, as it is described in the Sigmarite Gospel, the cult’s most sacred literary work, “he forsook the world of mortals to augment the realm of the Gods.” The festival is celebrated throughout the Empire with great feasts and merry-making, and in Altdorf there is a great procession round the city walls, led by the Grand Theogonist himself. T he C ulT of T aal & r hya The cult of Taal and Rhya has no centre of worship, but within each geographic region—the Great Forest, the Middle Mountains, and the like—there is a temple or stone circle where the region’s hierarchs are based. The cult’s stone circles are its oldest places of worship, most surviving from the age of Ishernos. The circles stand on hilltops and in glades throughout the Old World and are the sites for holy day celebrations and the cult’s rites. With the hierarchs’ permission, Jade Wizards sometimes weave their spells among the megaliths. Most of the temples specifically dedicated to Taal stand in, or on the fringes of, wilderness. They are generally circular and built of unmortared stone. Their roofs are conical, with the oldest temples, which are in the northern Empire, having timber-framed roofs covered with thatch or turf. There is a circular central hearth, but the temples are otherwise empty; there are no statues, altars, seats, or other furnishings. The hearth is built up from the floor in two or three courses of drystone walling and is sometimes faced with animal skulls. Shrines to Taal take several forms, from miniature versions of the temples to sacred groves. Many groves sacred to Taal are marked by the skull of a stag or bear hung in the oldest tree. Mountain shrines often take the form of a cairn topped by the skull of such a creature, and it is customary for all passersby to add a stone to the cairn as a sign of respect.
T he h onourable T hIng I banged on the priest’s door for a long time. It was late and past the visiting hour. Finally, I heard the scrape of metal on wood and the eyehole opened. “Who is it?” a gruff voice asked. I recognized the speaker immediately. “Surely you remember your old comrade, Karl-Friedrich?” I said. The door flew open. Holtz looked fatter than I remembered. The life of a city priest is a good one, I reflected. “Karl-Friedrich? My good man, come in, come in. Sorry for the surly greeting but it’s after sundown.” “I apologize for the hour of my arrival. I was held up by bandits on the road.” “Are you alright?” Holtz said, concerned. I nodded and he relaxed. “I should have known you could take care of yourself. I’ll never forget that night we spent in the Forest of Shadows. Without your hammer, we would never have left alive.” I smiled at the memory. Holtz was young then, as was I. We crushed a depraved cult that night, burning the heretics in Sigmar’s name. “I haven’t seen you in what, seven years?” asked Holtz. “It has been too long, my good Karl-Friedrich. Tell me, are you still with the Church?” “I am indeed,” I said quietly. “Though I have left the Order of the Silver Hammer.” “Moving on up, eh? Good for you. So, what brings you to Carroburg?” “I came here on business. I came to find a heretic.” I walked into Holtz’s living room and hunkered down by his fireplace. I picked up the poker and began to stoke the flames. Holtz remained standing. He seemed nervous. “A heretic? In Carroburg? This is the first I’ve heard of it.” “Oh yes, it’s quite true. There has been a thorough investigation, though the heretic in question never realized it.” I pulled the red-hot poker out the fire and stood up. Holtz took a step back. “It seems this heretic preached the word of Sigmar by day but worshipped the Ruinous Powers by night. Can you imagine it, Holtz? A priest of Sigmar, the very strength of the Empire, corrupted by the power of Chaos?” Holtz licked his lips. “Surely, there has been some sort of mistake. Karl-Friedrich, you can’t think it was me?” I was on him in three steps, my left hand closing around his neck while my right brought the poker inches from his face. “Holtz, it’s over. By the power of the Order of the Cleansing Flame, I cast you out of Sigmar’s Church. You will lead no others astray with your lies and deceits.” Holtz’s eyes went wide and sweat poured down his face. He whimpered as I continued my judgment. “If you want to bring shame to your family, there can be a trial. If you want everyone in Carroburg to know that you were an agent of the Ruinous Powers, you can continue to proclaim your innocence. Since you were at one time a faithful servant of Sigmar, however, and a friend to me, I have come here to offer you a choice.” I released my chokehold, pulled out my dagger, and thrust the hilt towards the disgraced priest. “You can have the trial or you can take the dagger and end it now. It’s your decision.” Holtz looked at me and then at the dagger. He was trapped and he knew it. He reached a trembling hand for the dagger... The news broke the next day. Holtz, a beloved priest of Sigmar, was found in his home, dead by his own hand. No one could understand why he had done it and his family paid for a lavish funeral. I left a pendant bearing Sigmar’s hammer on his grave, in memory for the man he had once been.
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